Richard Thorn is a highly successful British artist who was born and still lives in the West Country. Growing up living close to the sea and the rich Devon landscape has had an ongoing influence on Richard’s art work. His is consistently drawn to the majesty and grandeur of his native South Devon landscapes and seascapes.

Richard Thorn studied art at the Newton Abbot School of Art in the 1960’s. His early career was in music sector and he became an accomplished Jazz Guitarist. In the early 1980’s Richard Thorn began painting professionally. Since then he has produced many paintings and limited edition prints of the beautiful Devon and Cornish landscape and coastline. Like many British artists Richard has been drawn to the “quality of light” that the region is known for.

Richard is an intuitive artist, preferring to paint from ‘feeling’ rather than an academic standpoint. He creates paintings and limited edition prints using dramatic splashes of tone and colour succesfully capturing the bright and suffuse light. His paintings and limited edition prints have been shown in many British art exhibitions and galleries and his work is increasingly appreciated by UK art collectors and by those further afield.

The latest prints are a limited edition series of 195 for each print. For further details please contact the gallery.

Red Rag have announced that British artist Colin Kent is to show at the gallery. Kent is an artist member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours (RI) and was born in London in 1934. He studied painting and architecture at Walthamstow College of Art, and worked for a number of years as an architect. He was elected a member of the Royal Institute in 1971.

Over the last forty years Colin Kent has produced a remarkable body of work of superb quality. He is a master in combining the use of ink and gouache in conjunction with watercolour to achieve a textured and delicate tonal effect in his paintings. The sea and coastal locations have been a constant inspiration for Colin and he especially loves the locations of East Anglia. But his paintings are much more about capturing the atmosphere of a place and finding locations where solitude predominates and natural forms have softened the evidence of man. His art works display great sense of atmosphere and are often stark and haunting. He has the ability to successfully create feelings of isolation without loneliness or melancholy.

Speaking about his paintings Colin Kent says: ‘It is definitely a Romantic thing with me. I find people love lonely places and and the people who buy my art work are romantics too. I am drawn to desolate places often with crumbled down buildings. I try to keep on experimenting, and the more I use mixed media, the more I experiment. I choose a subject and then treat it in a modern way. I am always looking for different things to paint which present a challenge, hence the variety in my subject matter.’

In additon to Red Rag gallery Colin Kent paintings have been exhibited at: the Royal Institute; the Academy; the Guildhall; Royal West of England Academy and at a number of leading British and American art galleries. For further details email the gallery or

Born in 1944 Andrew Macara studied art for a short period with Leonard Fuller at the St Ives School of Painting in Cornwall, but he is very much a self taught artist. Today Macara has developed into one of the leading present day figurative British artists. He has a distinctive style of painting and a passion for capturing light and shade in his art works. This has brought him considerable success

For the latest paintings at Red Rag Macara travelled the UK producing appealing paintings of the British landscape and marine scenes. His art works are uplifting and the inclusion of children in many of his paintings strengths the sense of fun and joy.

The latest art show at Red Rag in Bath is a new exhibition which seeks to capture the vastness and ever-changing character of the sea through studies of British seascapes. Featuring a wide-range of contemporary interpretations of beaches, crashing waters and shorelines in oils, acrylic and other mediums, the new exhibition at aims to reflect on our enduring fascination and enchantment with the sea.

Today’s Red Rag update features a view of the Cornish fishing village of Polperro. It is an interesting piece of British Art from leading British artist Mike Bernard.

Mike Bernard produces highly textured semi-abstract paintings. He often uses mixed media incorporating both collage and acrylics. Regular subjects for Mike Bernard include coastal and street scenes of the British Sea and Countryside and Italy. Mike says: “What attracts me most is the pattern of buildings, boats and similar features in a scene. I build a painting by putting in blocks of colour to develop a pattern which is pleasing to my eye in colours which are harmonious, bringing in feelings of spontaneity, freshness and freedom.”

Today’s featured art is from English artist Matthew Draper was born in 1973 in Staffordshire. He studied at Walsall College of Art from 1991-92 and then Falmouth College of Art from 1992-95.

Draper begins his art work by pinning paper to the wall drawing first with pastel and charcoal. Then, crushing the pastel in his hands he spreads raw colour across the paper, working it in with the ball of his thumb. At a later stage, the dust created in this process, collected from the floor, is thrown at the picture where it clings and is rubbed in.

Matthew is very an action painter. His paintings resound with the evidence of reduction and accretion. Among his tools are sandpaper and sponges, used to erode the surface, transforming paper to smooth velvet, all the time spray-fixing each layer of pastel. He both builds a work and, at the same time, obliterates its form and structure. What began as a townscape dissolves in a sea of colour.

Matthew Draper’s paintings are in the art collections of Bank of Scotland, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow plus various private art collections in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Europe and the USA.

Continuing with the theme of our current Scottish art show, today we are highlighting the work of Archie Dunbar McIntosh

Archie Dunbar McIntosh was born in Glasgow in 1936. His Father generated Archie’s interest in art through visits to the Kelvingrove art gallery, whilst family holidays on paddlesteamers “doon the watter” gave McIntosh his life-long passion for the waters, banks and ‘flyers’ of the Clyde. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1953 to 1957.

McIntosh’s paintings reflect his enduring love of the Scottish Isles. Archie says: “Since childhood, I have lived in close proximity to sea, loch, river and mountain. As a painter I have the desire to investigate the form, colour, texture and mood of each, and respond through drawing and painting. I feel it is part of my cultural heritage to interpret and translate the many influences in my life and soul. Within the ‘larger vision’ there exists many smaller component parts, which can combine to wear the whole. For example, a small harbour can present graphic images of fishermen ropes, reels, boxes, boats, birds – each with the potential for interpretation changing light, changing mood, changing seasons, changing vision.”